If y’buy almost any packaged food in America, by law it comes with a label like a chemistry exam cheat-sheet.  “Nutrition Facts.”  Nowadays, the label includes a list called the Daily Value Percent, tellin you how much of certain vitamins, minerals and other food-parts you get in a serving.  It’s a percent of what the FDA says makes for a decent daily diet.  Originally, the FDA called the amount we needed in a decent diet, the Minimum Daily Requirement (MDR).  That MDR was on everything just like that label now.  Couldn’t get half a bowl of cereal without seein it outta the corner of your eye.  The Minimum Daily Requirement.

Maybe they stopped usin that name cause it gave kids the wrong idea.  It sure helped give me the wrong idea.  I started to wonder at some point what the Minimum Daily Requirement of other things was.  Like work.

What’s the Minimum Daily Requirement of work I can do, today, and not get fired?  What’s the MDR of hours I can put in and still make enough money to get by?  What’s the MDR of money I can spend, so I don’t have to work more?

And, yes, what’s the Minimum Daily Requirement for recovery.  What’s the least amount of effort I can put in and still stay un-intoxicated.

That didn’t happen right away.  Kinda like when I take a new job…those first few days, I’m just learning the job and deciding if I’m gonna stay.  Only later, when I got the lay of the land, does the MDR occur to me—and for various reasons.  Maybe I’m surrounded by slackers, maybe I don’t like the boss or vice-versa, maybe I’m tired that day…or week.

Recovery’s a lotta work, don’t let anybody kidya.  It’s hours and hours and hours—and sometimes the payoff is like getting beat on a drug deal.  Like your paycheck is halfa what you expected on accounta deductions you never expected.

Other times, y’get a bonus you didn’t even know was coming, and y’feel maybe even a little unworthy.

Maybe the worst part is when that whole MDR thing works.  It can work for years.  Y’get thrown off balance occasionally by death, divorce or some mundane madness, but y’go to the meeting, y’talk t’some people an bingo: back on the treadmill.  Steps?  Who needs em.  Everything I need is on the same floor.  After a while, I forget there IS another floor.  No steps up or down needed.

I come from flatland.  Flat as the ocean.  City is flat.  Outskirts are flat.  Country is flat.  One day, I go to visit friends at their new apartment.  It’s on the umpty-umpth floor.  It’s small and mostly empty, since they’re just moving in, and I walk in and see straight out the back, out the back door window.  I can see a gazillion miles, since they face the flat country.  I realize it’s been a long time since I been more than a couple floors up.  It’s a whole different view.

Life is not just this crappy, crammed little existence I have down in the street, where I can’t see around the next corner.  Life is also “up there,” where you can see for miles.  The bigger picture.  Up on the roof.  Upstairs.  Up those steps.

Seein the maximum daily picture might take more than the Minimum Daily Requirement.  There’s a lotta trudging for some of us, and we can forget to look up from our feet.  The road of happy destiny can seem all uphill, sometimes, but there’s a reason for that.  Wait til you see the view.